Market giants such as Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten has accepted cryptocurrency. On Tuesday the CEO of the company announced that the company is planning to launch Rakuten coins.

"The announcement by Rakuten is another example of positive developments in crypto in 2018, suggesting the large sell-off in bitcoin and others at the start of the year was an overshoot to the downside," - Tom Lee

In recent lee’s report released on Wednesday, Lee stated his mid-year bitcoin price target of $20,000 and year-end estimate $25,000. Many financial firms publish their crypto analysis report, but Lee is the only major wall street strategist to forecast price target of Bitcoin.

Lee further stated that the lowest point accounted by Bitcoin was in First two months of 2018. He added that the scenario was same in six of the last seven years.

As per coin market cap, Bitcoin was trading at around $10,600 on Wednesday morning which is approximately 21% down for the year. The peak point recorded by Bitcoin till now is high above $19,000 and the lowest point after attaining peak point is $6000. The total market capital of all cryptocurrencies excluding Bitcoins is around $270 Billion which has halved from the peak of $511 Billion.

Lee further suggested not to invest in alt-coins such as Z-Cash and Ripple till late March as the tokens witnessed a sharp fall.

Lee is of the view that recent announcements by companies regarding involvement in virtual tokens can also result in rise in price.

"In 2018, we forecast at least three major publicly-traded corporations to issue native digital tokens; Already three major companies have announced efforts within crypto-currencies, which demonstrate that corporations may be moving towards crypto-currencies before Wall Street has embraced them." - Tom Lee

Further Lee explained his point of view using some examples:

A Japan-based messaging app, Line declared by the end of January that the company is planning to launch a new application serving as a platform for the exchange of virtual tokens named, Line Financial.

The Executive Chairman Howard Schultz of Starbucks has shown his interest in Blockchain Technology in last two months and also talked about its possible use for a consumer payment application

"I think blockchain technology is probably the rails in which an integrated app at Starbucks will be sitting on top of," – Schultz

In his report, Lee also compared two giant technology-related industries- Facebook and Amazon, and cryptocurrency

Lee shared his speculation that if Facebook also entered in the crypto economy, then users will get more benefit from Initial coin offerings instead of stock investment. Same response can be observed in case of Amazon.

In a January post the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg stated that his company is interested in participating in the crypto economy.

An online poll was conducted with Polfish from 23rd February to 24th February where 51.7% of Americans said that they would like to use an Amazon created a virtual token for purchasing.

Applancer is an open platform for discussion on all things like Blockchain , Cryptocurrency and Ico news updates. As such, the opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the view of Applancer .